Key Issues

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) will be fifty years old in June 2014. Since its first conference in Geneva in 1964, UNCTAD has played an important role in promoting developing countries' equitable participation in the world economy.

To celebrate this important moment in UNCTAD's history, UNCTAD Special Unit on Commodities, in partnership with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Common Fund for Commodities (CFC), will organize a special event entitled "50 Years of Research and Policy Advice on Commodities and Development: The Role of UNCTAD".

Objective of this event:

Discuss UNCTAD's contribution to the global debate on commodities and development over the past 50 years.

Generate ideas that would further enhance UNCTAD's role in assisting commodity-dependent developing countries (CDDCs) to address the perennial and new challenges facing commodity-based economies.

Participants:

The target audience of this event include the representatives of governments, EU, ACP Secretariat, UN institutions, private sector stakeholders, NGOs, academia, as well as students interested in commodity and development issues.